A trigger-happy CIA guard, Raymond Davis, is caught up in a power struggle
between the army chief and President Zardari. Praveen Swami reports

In other circumstances, the characters involved in the charged piece of theatre now unfolding in Pakistan might have provoked wry smiles: a trigger-happy American diplomat and ex-soldier whose name may or may not be Raymond Davis; two small-time criminals who made the mistake of agreeing to do a little job for their country; a shadowy Florida firm which lists an abandoned storefront in Orlando as its address; and a large supporting cast of bungling spies.

But no one’s laughing, because the stakes in Lahore are deadly serious. Ever since the restoration of democracy to Pakistan in 2008, the world has hoped that President Asif Ali Zardari’s government will prove a durable bulwark against chaos and terror in the country. But the case of the mysterious Mr Davis could rip apart the already fraught relationship between the United States and nuclear-armed Pakistan, and threaten President Zardari, with incalculable consequences for the region and the West.

Late on the morning of January 25, a senior CIA officer stationed in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, was scheduled to meet an informant near the busy Qurtada square in Lahore. Mr Davis, a former special forces officer hired by the CIA from a private security contractor based in Florida, was part of her security detail. He was tasked with making sure the area was safe for her arrival and positioning himself to respond if things went wrong. Sure enough, they did.

For reasons that have yet to be established, local residents Faizan Ali and his brother Fahim Ali pulled up in front of Mr Davis’s car, waving weapons. Mr Davis did what he had been trained to do when men pointed guns at him: both men were dead before they could get a shot off. A second back-up vehicle, speeding to help Mr Davis, knocked over and killed a third man, Ibadur Rehman.

US officials suspect that the Ali brothers, who police say had a record of involvement in theft, had been put to work by the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, Pakistan’s feared intelligence service. The ISI has long been fuming over the CIA’s aggressive efforts to penetrate jihadist groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba – but the CIA’s Islamabad station hadn’t listened. The proposition that the brothers were put up to scaring off the CIA is not implausible. Though the men were well known locally, they made no effort to conceal their identities. This suggests they were reasonably certain that the Lahore police wouldn’t show up at their door. Moreover, carjackers – which it was suggested they might have been – typically pull up alongside their victims, not in front of them, for the good reason that they do not wish to be run over.

Given that he holds a diplomatic passport, the next steps in Mr Davis’s story should have been predictable: a declaration that he was persona non grata, and a ticket on the first flight home. Instead, he was held by police and will remain in jail until the Lahore High Court hears his case next month, when the government is due to say whether it believes Mr Davis enjoys diplomatic immunity.

International law is clear: the Vienna Convention of 1961 says that diplomats “shall not be liable to any form of arrest or detention”. Even spies, who serve under diplomatic cover at the embassies of all nations in all countries, and often with the assent of their host states, enjoy this privilege. Pakistani officials argue that Mr Davis had not been recognised as a diplomat by Pakistan. But several British diplomats have told The Daily Telegraph that the fact that Mr Davis held a diplomatic passport and a visa allowing him to conduct official business settles the debate.

Pakistan’s politicians have concerns other than legal niceties, though. Parts of the country’s press have long reported the presence of legions of US spies supposedly seeking to rob Pakistan of its nuclear weapons. Reporting of the Davis case has been peppered with claims that he was photographing military installations. In fact, the contents of Mr Davis’ camera have been disclosed: he was taking tourist snaps of buffalos blocking traffic, camel carts and other exotic aspects of street life – and the supposedly secret military installations he was said to be keen to photograph can be seen in three-dimensional glory on the internet.

Farcical as the claims might be, the polemic resonates in a country where the US is widely held to be responsible for precipitating a conflict that has led to the deaths of thousands in nationwide terrorist strikes. Public outrage has swelled because of lurid accounts of civilian casualties in US drone attacks within Pakistan’s borders – even though those operations are sanctioned by the military.

The ruling People’s Party is divided on how to deal with the Davis crisis. Just this week, it sacked Fauzia Wahab, its spokesperson, for asserting that the country’s disrespect for international law would make it an outcast. President Asif Ali Zardari fears that acting to free Mr Davis will undermine his already tattered reputation – and allow the opposition Muslim League, led by the former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, which rules the province of Punjab, to cast itself as a defender of national honour and pride.

Even more important are the views of the all-powerful army. Ever since he took office in November 2007, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the chief of the army staff, has slowly worked to reverse key elements of the pro-US policies pursued by his predecessor, General Pervez Musharraf. He abandoned Gen Musharraf’s secret peace initiative with India, and eased pressure on jihadist groups. Late last year, at a closed-door briefing, he even asserted that the “real aim of US strategy is to denuclearise Pakistan”.

Gen Kayani hopes for a deal that will give the Taliban and its affiliates a significant share of power in Afghanistan. Such a deal, he believes, will allow the army to make peace with its jihadist allies-turned-enemies, who began waging a murderous insurgency in Pakistan’s north-west after the US compelled Gen Musharraf to act against terrorist safe havens in the region. The insurgency has claimed the lives of thousands of soldiers, and led to an ever-increasing spiral of terrorist violence that threatens to rip Pakistan apart.

The unfolding Davis case, some analysts argue, helps to create a climate that will allow Gen Kayani to push his case that Pakistan must extricate itself from the US war on terror – and to limit cooperation without losing desperately needed aid. If this is Gen Kayani’s objective, he is likely to find sympathetic ears among the judiciary. The eminent Pakistani commentator Ahmed Rashid recently pointed out that judges and generals seemed to be batting for the same team, noting “how rarely judges pursue cases of human-rights violations by soldiers, whereas cases that hurt the government fly into the courts”.

“The bottom line,” says C Christine Fair, a scholar at Georgetown University, “is that the Pakistanis do not want a strategic relationship with the US. Washington needs to get over the idea that throwing more money at Pakistan will make it see its own interests differently.”

Last summer, at a ceremony held to mark the sacrifices of Pakistani soldiers who had died in battle, Gen Kayani announced that “there is no greater honour than martyrdom nor any aspiration greater than it”. “We are well aware,” he concluded, “of the historical reality that nations must be willing to make great sacrifices for their freedom.” Pakistan’s Islamist clerics could well have made the speech.

Will Mr Davis be sacrificed for the cause of the freedom Gen Kayani believes Pakistan has lost because of its embrace of US strategic objectives in the region? Next month, Pakistan’s Foreign Office will either have to tell a Lahore court that Mr Davis enjoys diplomatic immunity, and risk incensing its people – or keep him in jail, and thus infuriate the US and the world.